Posts Tagged ‘Villanova’

We have looked at several successful baseline out of bounds plays over the past week, including this one by Tennessee that had the screener getting open after the defense went to double a shooter. Notre Dame ran a similar version of this play, yet the inbounder was the player open at the end of this play, not the screener.

Although this may not always be the case, when you see this setup with a scorer in the mold of Hansbrough, you have to first think that the shooter is going to come across the paint off a double screen. Notre Dame starts with that action, as we saw with the Tennessee play earlier.

I have had several posts highlighting how screening a zone can be a successful action against the zone (see here and here). One screen that is under-utilized is screening in a shooter in the corner. I briefly touched on it here with Belmont but Notre Dame ran it beautifully tonight.

Coming off an offensive rebound, Ben Hansbrough reset the Irish offense against a 2-3 zone. He called for a ball screen on Maalik Wayns on the right wing, which would be set by Scott Martin. Villanova (mainly Corey Fisher) realizes what is coming and calls out the shooter running baseline to the corner.

I really liked the play drawn up by Jim Boeheim at halftime that got Syracuse a dunk attempt to start the second half. It involved Rick Jackson faking setting a screen before cutting to the basket. When Mouphtaou Yarou defends a ball screen, he hustles out to hedge on the ball screen. Syracuse takes advantage of that in this play.

Here is a look at Yarou hedging on a ball screen from the Pitt game. Look at him anticipate the ball screen and get above the ball screen to cut the ball handler off.

Here is how Yarou anticipates the play being run. He thinks that Jackson is going to set a ball screen for Kris Joseph (red arrow), so he is already thinking about hedging the screen (green arrow), so he is playing about a half step higher than Jackson so he can get in position to defend the ball screen.

I didn’t see the game live but there was a good reaction to this play from Twitter, so I decided to take a look at it in the game archive. I liked the setup and execution coming out of the timeout, so I wanted to give a breakdown of how DePaul got open to take the late lead in regulation.

Here is how DePaul set up after the timeout. Normally, you would expect the two players around the top of the key to start the action to try to get the ball and initiate the play. This is why the flash from the corner works so well to start the play. It comes from a spot on the floor that action does not usually start from – the far corner.

Cleveland Melvin flashes to the near wing to catch the inbounds pass to start the play. Isaiah Armwood is protecting the paint and therefore, Melvin is able to get open with his flash from the far corner. Armwood is not expecting Melvin to be part of the play and lets him get a free cut toward the near sideline.

We saw earlier this season the struggles Pitt had with the pick and roll defense (see here). I saw them throw in a new wrinkle with their pick and roll defense against Villanova, which seemed to work pretty well. It involves Gary McGhee hedging on the screen, with the help defender rotating to the roll man, instead of forcing McGhee to recover back to the roll man.

Here we see Mouphtaou Yarou setting the screen for Maalik Wayns. McGhee hedges on the screen and this is where the wrinkle comes in to the defense. McGhee has struggled with recovering to the roll man in the past, so Pitt has worked harder to rotate the help man over to the roll man.

One of the staples of the Villanova offense is the pick and roll, which they run with several of their guards. West Virginia is a team set up well to defend the pick and roll, as their big men are athletic enough to switch the screen. Here is a clip from early in the game that shows Cam Thoroughman switching the pick and roll and picking up Corey Fisher as he drives to the basket. Thoroughman can move his feet and stay with Fisher and not allow him to get a shot off.

However, Deniz Kilicli is not quite on the same level as Thoroughman or John Flowers in terms of perimeter defense. He makes an early mistake on the pick and roll but makes a nice adjustment later in the game.

Syracuse forces a ton of turnovers and bad possessions by trapping out of the zone in the deep corner. Antonio Pena found himself in this situation but a great individual play (with some help from his teammates) still gave Villanova an open 3.